


The Way of a Man With a Mirage

by Untherius



Category: Lawrence of Arabia (1962)
Genre: Other
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-21
Updated: 2014-12-21
Packaged: 2018-03-02 14:30:57
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,146
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2815517
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Untherius/pseuds/Untherius
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Most men had relationships with women.  But Lawrence had one with a desert.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Way of a Man With a Mirage

**Author's Note:**

  * For [rachel2205](https://archiveofourown.org/users/rachel2205/gifts).



Some would say a desert is all one vast expanse of nothing but sand. They would be wrong. Lawrence himself had once been one of them. When he'd first arrived in the Middle East, he hadn't known just how wrong he'd been.

Arabia had taken him by surprise, with its sea of complexities lurking beneath an initially unassuming surface. He'd delved deeply into its treasures despite himself, for the desert had a way of working its way into one's soul and in such a manner that one came to fall in love with it in the most intimate of ways.

Lawrence would never have called it carnal. Rather, it was more the way one might gradually fall in love with an arranged wife whose homely face hid a beautiful heart. And just as the husband of such a wife might come to know her as a woman of strength, depth, and furious passion, so Lawrence had come to know the desert.

His first encounter with sand involved taking cover during a raging storm, emerging later and having to shove sand away from doors, sweep it out from beneath lorry tires, and shovel it from railroad tracks.

Only later had he come to know just how mesmerizing it could be. Like a blizzard of sand it was, wind-driven across roads in swirling drifts, only heavier than powdered snow. He'd stood watching sand dunes in their inexorable march across just about everything. The way the wind blew small clouds of sand from their crests and dropping them against the slope of the next reminded Lawrence of white-capped ocean waves in very slow motion.

Even where shifting sand met the waters of sea, river, or oasis, the two collided, irresistible force meeting immovable object. The two then writhed together in a complicated dance that only ended when their collective energy was spent, only to resume some time later when their precarious balance would once again require realignment.

It had been the same with sand and dust storms. One could usually see their approach for miles, a wall of roiling brown marching inexorably forward and one could practically feel it as it did. For most, such storms were to be endured, ridden out from within the protection of house or shed or tent. Lawrence had once huddled in the lee of a not so large rock as the wind had raged around him. It had torn at his clothing, its hot breath driving through the fabric, dust and sand pricking at every bit of exposed skin with unmatched fury, as though the desert itself were caressing his body in its own way. Seldom had he felt so alive!

Crossing the Sinai, he'd gazed upon its mountains rising abruptly from the landscape. He'd once likened them to the teeth of a great, prehistoric land shark, rooted in the floors of innumerable flat-bottomed labyrinthine valleys that carved up the whole southern half of the peninsula, sparse bits of grasses and twiggy shrubs grasping at whatever moisture they could dredge out of the gritty soil. Perhaps it had been seeing those same jagged lines of rock from the sapphire waters of the Gulf of Aqaba, or the first spring rising up out of otherwise unforgiving rock that had shifted his perception. Where before, he had seen lines of craggy saws waiting to cut down the unwary and unprepared, he had come to perceive bosom and milky breast bathing in warm, fish-filled water or nourishing the weary traveler.

Closer to Cairo, the flat plain surrounding the Suez Canal was unremarkable, mile after mile of very little but dirt, rock, and the occasional pocket of sand, spreading out into dunes to the east in some places. Even there, passing the very edge of the Nile River Delta, date palms and bananas waved in the torrid breezes.

Sloping eastward from Petra, small, smooth, oily black rocks covered the gently rolling plain like crushed black pepper on whipped sweet potato, gradually vanishing into the shimmery waves of heat roiling off it, the undulating surface eventually disintegrating into sheets of watery mirage.

Even the rocks themselves seemed alive. Lawrence recalled one time when he'd been on the road along the Dead Sea. He'd stopped for a late lunch, and had been stretching his legs, gazing up at the lumpy brown rocks rising like a giant's staircase into the heights toward Jerusalem. A spot of light cloud had drifted in front of the sun, diffusing its light, and bringing a welcomed respite to the day's heat.

Movement up above had caught his eye, and he'd looked up to see a Nubian ibex leisurely picking its way between the rocks, its large, bumpy, curving horns reminding Lawrence of the heraldic yale. As he watched, another ibex moved, materializing out of nowhere. One by one, more of the animals sprang into being, joining the growing herd drifting across the slope in short, bounding motions. At a glance, he'd have guessed there to have been somewhere in the order of three dozen of them. They trotted in a brown wave over the space of a hundred yards. Then, one by one, they stopped, each animal vanishing as suddenly as it had appeared, as though melting back into the rock.

He'd felt scorching heat ripple off the rock, sand, and dust that always ended up in inexplicable places, caked to his skin by his own sweat. He'd felt the sudden cooling of the air just before storm clouds burst open upon him, drops the size of lentils pouring down to drench him, as though they could cleanse the land of the acts man had wrought upon it, and the brief hours of humidity lingering afterward. He'd felt the night's chill as the sun sank over the horizon, pulling its heat along with it.

He'd seen a blood-red sun sink shimmering at day's end, orange light giving way to deepening blue before fading completely, revealing billions of stars strewn across the blackness as though the gods had scattered a pound of sugar across a vast expanse of sable velvet.

No, the desert was most certainly alive. He could feel it in his very bowels. It had worked its way into his blood, in a way he couldn't describe, and he could no longer tell where he stopped and the desert began.

Lawrence still didn't know whether or not he would ever marry. But if he did, his bride would have to be a true daughter of the desert. She would be the desert made manifest in human form. Her eyes would be twin oases. Her hair would be silken like fine sand flowing through is fingers. In her embrace, he would know its reckless, raging fury. And like the desert, she would come at him with everything she had, demanding the same from him and it would take all he had to meet her.

**Author's Note:**

> Some years back, I had an opportunity to study abroad in Cairo, Egypt. During my semester there--the late winter and spring months that academic year--I did some traveling in the region. Many of the visuals in this story are from my own memories. The ibexes, in particular, were something I witnessed at Qumran across the road from the Dead Sea--darndest thing I'd ever seen, like nature's ghille cloaks--they really did look like they materialized out of the rock itself and then just vanished! The desert can certainly be a thing of beauty and she can sustain you, but the moment you disrespect her, you'll regret it.


End file.
